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An online pharmacy in Ticino: shop and shipping managed by us, and CHF 1.60 less on every parcel

Two years with the online shop and shipping managed by us: that's where the biggest saving came from, CHF 1.60 on every parcel. Plus a catalogue and design looked after every day, marketing campaigns and a booking system built from scratch for rapid Covid tests.

Pharmacy with online salesE-commerce · Health and wellbeing

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The numbers

What changed

Under each figure it says where it comes from: they're conservative estimates based on average volumes for the period.

−CHF 1.60
on every order shippedunit rate, after switching courier and renegotiating
over CHF 25,000
saved every yearon an average of ~50 orders a day
100 orders
from a single flash campaignreceived within a few hours
2 years
of ongoing managementa single point of contact, with no in-house hires
The starting point

The situation

A pharmacy in Ticino with an established online shop already doing volume: an average of around fifty orders a day, all to be prepared, packed and taken to the drop-off point. Every day someone had to load them up and go. The website worked, but nobody was looking after it consistently: the catalogue was falling behind, campaigns went out when there was time and the shipping rate was the same as ever, because nobody had ever questioned it.

At the same time came the season of rapid Covid tests, with a flow of people at the counter that the phone alone could no longer handle.

They handed us the lot: the online shop, shipping, campaigns and day-to-day IT support. The biggest saving turned up in shipping, a cost you only see by following it order after order.

What we did

The work

Four fronts worked on in parallel, for the whole length of the engagement.

  1. Shipping managed by us, and CHF 1.60 less on every parcel

    Shipping moved over to us: fifty parcels a day to prepare and send, every day. Handling it ourselves brought to light a figure nobody was looking at any more: what it costs to send a parcel, at that volume and with those goods. We switched courier and renegotiated the rates based on real volumes: CHF 1.60 less per parcel, with the same service for the recipient. The new contract also changed the way of working, which wasn't part of the plan: before, the parcels had to be loaded up and taken to the drop-off point every day; now the courier comes to collect them at the pharmacy.

    • courier switched and rates renegotiated on real volumes: CHF 1.60 less per order
    • around CHF 80 a day and over CHF 2,000 a month on ~50 orders daily
    • more than CHF 25,000 a year staying in the business, without touching selling prices
    • parcels collected at the pharmacy instead of the daily trip to the drop-off point

  2. The whole online shop, looked after every day

    The shop moved over to us entirely: the design, adding and maintaining products, product pages, images, a consistent catalogue, orders to fulfil. It's the daily care a shop with those volumes needs, and that nobody at the pharmacy had time for.

    • graphic redesign and a tidied-up catalogue structure
    • ongoing product entry and updates
    • one steady point of contact for every change, without opening a new project each time

  3. Marketing campaigns, flash sales included

    The shop's sales calendar went from occasional to regular. Alongside the seasonal campaigns we worked on flash promotions, the ones with a short window: one of them brought in a hundred orders in a few hours.

    • recurring campaigns planned instead of improvised
    • flash promotions with offer, timing and messaging prepared in advance
    • a single flash campaign: 100 orders in a few hours

  4. Online booking for rapid Covid tests

    We built the online appointment service for the rapid tests from scratch. People chose their own time slot, the pharmacy saw the day already organised and the phone stopped being the only channel.

    • self-service booking on the website, without calling
    • the flow at the counter spread across the day instead of bunched up
    • less staff time spent on the phone arranging appointments
The outcome

What's left

The biggest saving came from shipping: over CHF 25,000 a year, on a rate nobody was looking at any more. We found it because we were handling the shipping ourselves every day: looking at the work from outside, as a consultant, a margin like that rarely comes to light. On top of that, the daily trip to the drop-off point disappeared, and that time went back to the counter.

For two years the pharmacy had its online shop, shipping, campaigns, bookings and IT covered by a single point of contact, without hiring anyone.

This is often how we work with SMEs: we start where money is leaking out for no reason, then manage what would otherwise fall behind.

Why the collaboration ended

The pharmacy was sold to a group that already has in-house staff for the work we were doing, and the engagement ended there. It didn't end because of how the work had gone: the ownership changed. We mention it because a case study that doesn't say how things ended is only worth half as much.

Services involved

What we brought in

The same areas of work we bring to every company: this engagement needed 4 of them, together.

Further reading

How we work on these topics

The thinking behind this case, explained in full on the blog (in Italian).

Keep reading

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